Welcome to my blog—an eyes-open, no holds barred exploration of Western and Eastern spirituality, mindfulness, philosophy and literature. A member of the Australian and New Zealand Mental Health Association, I lectured at the NSW Institute of Psychiatry (now the Health Education and Training Institute) to mental health workers for 14 years and at the University of Technology, Sydney to law students for 16 years. My interests include metaphysics, mythology and addiction recovery.

Friday, November 1, 2013

MINDFULNESS, BURLESQUE COMEDY AND MONOMANIA

One
of my life-long interests (academic and otherwise) has been burlesque---especially
the ‘old school,’ ‘golden age,’ classical type of American burlesque with, yes,
a moderate amount of striptease---provided it is more ‘tease’ than ‘strip’---as
well as, most importantly, baggy pants comedy that goes to the right degree of anarchic
bawdiness and surreal silliness.

Famed
ecdysiast (that is, stripper) Ann Corio [pictured left], who was sometimes
referred to as the ‘Queen of Burlesque,’ once said---indeed, she said it many times---that burlesque without the
comedy and the comics was, well, not burlesque at all. I tend to agree. Modern-day
burlesque, for the most part, is little more than no-holds-barred, bare-faced
(and bare everything else) striptease, the sole aim of which is erotic
stimulation. (Don’t get me wrong. I’m no prude.) Gone are the comics---with only
a few exceptions. Go back to the start of last century, and the burlesque comic
was the acknowledged star of the
show. Of that there was no doubt. Even the strippers were conscripted into the
blackout sketches as walk-ons or in more substantial roles. For example, the
one and only Gypsy Rose Lee, in her later years, proudly recalled playing small
comedic roles in such sketches as ‘Floogle Street’ (see below) and the
Kafkaesque ‘Pay the Two Dollars’ (the latter written by Billy K Wells [burlesque’s most proficient writer] and comic Willie Howard, based on an idea by Finley Peter Dunne, Jr), two of my favourite
‘bits.’

… The
Burlesque show appeals to our inner passion for anarchy. It appeals also to our
desire to renounce the painful effort of intelligence and behave as creatures
of instinct not of will. …

The
structure of a typical burlesque scene is a critique of common sense. And a
critique also of sentiment. Pathos, of course, is another form of moral
restraint, and Burlesque delighted in making fun of it.

Advertisement, Empire Theatre, Newark, New Jersey

Spot
on. Burlesque presents a proletarian and egalitarian world-view, free from
inhibitions and restraints of all kinds, be they social, cultural, political,
moral or religious. You see, nothing,
absolutely nothing, was too serious
or sacred not to be mocked, belittled, ridiculed, or satirised in burlesque---and
that included such things as love, lust, sex, marriage, religion, and even
mental illness (shock, horror!). Yes, some of the most famous burlesque skits portrayed
some form of insanity or monomania in full flight, generally accompanied with animalistic
acts of violence and other grotesqueries of an almost ‘cartoon’ and
hyper-realistic (if not surrealistic) kind. Monomania is not a term that is
widely used in psychology and psychiatry these days, but it refers to some form or other of partial (or temporary) insanity
conceived as a single pathological and obsessive preoccupation---be it
emotional or intellectual---in an otherwise sound mind.

Take, for example, the famous burlesque chestnut known as
‘Floogle [sometimes spelled ‘Flugel,’ 'Flugle' or ‘Fleugel’] Street’ (and also known as
‘Which Way is Floogle [ditto] Street?’). A variant of it, as performed in the
Abbott and Costello film In Society,
is ‘Bagel Street’ (which is also known as ‘Susquehanna Hat Company’). In the A&C version, every
time the words ‘Bagel Street’ or ‘Susquehanna Hat Company’ are spoken by the
hapless patsy Lou Costello (who is trying to deliver a carton of straw hats to
the Susquehanna Hat Company [or, in some versions, the Paskuniak Hat Company] located on that street), some third person in the
form of a passerby---and there are several such passersby in the course of the
routine---goes into a monomaniacal rage or frenzy. (The background to this
routine is interesting, involving a strike at a hat factory, and a person who
is hired as a strikebreaker without knowing it. He’s the one delivering the
hats to the hat company, only to be confronted by a number of very angry
strikers---the poor schlemiel. The story was reworked in burlesque for comic effect.) Anyway, here
is one version of the immortal sketch,
this one taken from In Society:

It has been noted that quintessential burlesque sketches such
as ‘Floogle Street’ feature other thematic displays---some of them being tasteless
and quite politically incorrect these days---for example, displays or at least
suggestions of such things as nymphomania (hypersexuality), necrophilia, tic douloureux (trigeminal neuralgia), and
cleft palate. Some of these can be seen in the A&C version above. It seems
that the secret of burlesque is this---the more tasteless the better. There is
no place for any pity, pathos or sentimentality in burlesque comedy. Those
emotions are full of moral pretence, and burlesque has no time for moralising
of any kind.

There is a very similar monomaniacal motif in that other
great burlesque rough-house but word-heavy routine known as ‘Niagara Falls’
(which is also known as ‘Slowly I Turned,’ ‘Slowly I Turn,’ ‘The Stranger with
a Kind Face,’ ‘Pokomoko,’ and ‘Martha’). I have read that Joey Faye was the
author of both ‘Floogle Street’ and ‘Niagara Falls,’ but several others have
laid claim to the authorship of the latter, including Harry Steppe (who was a
former burlesque partner of Bud Abbott, before the latter teamed up with Lou
Costello) and Samuel Goldman, and I have also read that Billy K Wells wrote ‘Floogle
Street’ in 1918 (which is probably the case). Having said that, most, if not
all, of these classic well-travelled and
widely copied routines routines were the work of a number of people over time, with
later comedians adding their own peculiar shtick to the work of others. In this
sketch the comic meets a down-and-outer (the straight man) whose life---and sanity---have
been ruined by his unfaithful wife. The down-and-outer goes into an absolute
frenzy just at the mention of the words ‘Niagara Falls,’ being the place where
he caught his wife and the guy who stole her from him ...

‘Niagara Falls!
Slow-w-ly I turned. Step by step---inch by inch---I crept upon him. And when I
got close enough I grabbed him by the throat---and I choked him--- (Beats up onCOMIC.) ---and I hit him and strangled and bit and kicked and--- (COMICis on the floor---STRAIGHT MANsuddenly comes out of it.) Oh! What are you
doing down there?’

Here, then, is a near-seamless presentation of oneversion of this time-honoured standard routine, masterfully performed
by the great Sid Fields (who wrote a version of the routine that has been
performed by many great performers over the years) and the hapless patsy Lou Costello:

For
those who are interested, here’s another version of the routine, done by TV greats Lucille Ball and Phil Silvers with great timing and precision. And this post
would not be complete without a passing reference to the surreal ‘Crazy House’ (also
known as the ‘Nut House’) sketch, in which our comic anti-hero checks himself
into a 'clinic' to get some rest, only to be confronted and humiliated by the
increasingly zany and anarchic antics of a series of grotesque walk-ons and their
various bizarre and intrusive set-ups. (In its original form, an applicant for a job in a mental
hospital is mistaken for one of the inmates.) This brilliant old warhorse also reveals
old-time burlesque’s fascination with insanity, mental asylums, ‘rest homes,’
and so-called ‘crazy people.’ Remember, these were very early days for
psychiatry, which was yet to be recognised as a separate medical specialty in
its own right. (In many hospitals, the mental health needs of patients were
attended to by neurologists.) Oh, there’s also this version of ‘Crazy House’
presented by Ann Corio. It’s very faithful to the way it was usually done in the burlesque houses of
yesteryear:

Steel Pier (Atlantic City, New Jersey) handbill from 1938.

Note that the two famous comedy teams The Three Stooges

and Abbott and Costello were appearing in different stage showsat the Steel Pier at the same time.

All
of these absurd, but very funny, burlesque sketches have one thing in common.
Well, they have many things in common, but this one is very important to the
achievement of the overall humour, namely, that there is, in both form and
content, an ever-escalating sense of unreality. The sketch builds and builds in
silliness, and you get swept along with it all. You see, for all the anarchic and
uninhibited silliness, good burlesque comedy has a certain logic about it---an
internal order, structure, and overall coherence. It is never static, but
always dynamic. It is a living thing
… and it is a work of art. That is how I and many others see it. I never get
tired of watching these skits over and over again. They are so very
clever---and funny---and they hold a mirror up to life, enabling us to become aware of life’s ‘as-it-is-ness’
… in all of its gross absurdity.

Billy Minsky's Republic Theatre, 42nd Street, New York City

Now,
what has all this burlesque comedy stuff got to do with mindfulness, you may be
asking? Well, as I see it, we are all a bit monomaniacal. ‘Speak for yourself,
Ellis-Jones!’ Well, I am---and whether you like it or not I am also speaking
for you … and you … and you. You see, we all get ourselves into
a state---or our minds tend to get fixated on some more-or-less automatic
reflex thought, idea, emotion, or memory---that goes into flight when the right
trigger presents itself. ‘Snap’ … and there’s the reaction. It’s like this. We experience a ‘sensation’ of some
sort or other, which may be physical or mental (including, of course, emotional).
If wereactto that sensation with ‘liking’ or
‘disliking’---that is, with craving, attachment or aversion---that iskarma. The wordkarmameans 'action'---in this casemental
actionin the form of
a mindless, involuntary reaction to some input. The result? Pain, suffering, distress,
frenzy … and even temporary insanity! However, if, on the other hand, we simply
allow ourselves to be dispassionately
and choicelessly aware of the
sensation, then there is no ‘cause’ to produce any pain, suffering or distress.
In other words, no reaction, no cause … and no effect.

The
important thing, as I see it, is to take the cause-and-effect process back one
step earlier. In much self-help literature, the primary emphasis is on
avoiding negative thinking, and instead thinking positively, and the like, the
rationale being that negative thoughts lead to negative results, whereas positive
thoughts will inevitably lead to positive results---an obvious
but debatable proposition. However, if we go back a step, and
when something happens we simply do not allow
a reaction (eg liking or disliking) to arise in the first
place. In other words, we simply let the sensation (input) be.
Then there will be no opportunity for any negative thought to arise at all. That is
the way the so-called 'law' of karma really works. That is
the way to mindfully ‘work’ the law of cause and effect (or 'sowing and
reaping').

So,
how best can we prevent or avoid that mindless,
involuntary, seemingly automatic, even unconscious, reaction to some input
(whether internal or external)?

Well, cognitive behavioural therapy can
assist, as can other forms of psychotherapy as well as mental cultivation of
various kinds. Mindfulness can be particularly helpful, because it teaches us
to ‘watch,’ ‘observe,’ and ‘wait.’ Instead of reacting like some sort of
automaton we learn to simply be aware---choicelessly.
Yes, it takes time, and much practice, but we can teach ourselves to put some
‘space’ or ‘distance’ between the observing person
each of us and the event---internal or external---that, but for a mindful mind,
results in a reaction.

Burlesque
is a mindset and an attitude---and a way of looking at life, with directness
and immediacy. So is mindfulness.

‘Slow-w-ly
I turned. Step by step---inch by inch.’ Well, put some slow-w-ness---that is, watchfulness---into the turning
of your mind … from one moment to the next. It will work wonders in your life.

Important Note---and Grateful Acknowledgments

Images
of Lucille Ball are licensed by Desilu, too, LLC. Licensing by Unforgettable
Licensing. All Rights Reserved.The
licensable images of Abbott and Costello, the routine ‘Who's on First’ and
other routines and materials of and by Abbott and Costello are controlled
material of the Estates
of the LateBud
Abbottand
the LateLou
Costello. All rights reserved. The various clips (courtesy YouTube) are presented here
for entertainment, nonprofit and non-commercial purposes only. There is no
intention to infringe copyright or any other controlled material. This post,
and the blog site itself, are solely for informational and educational purposes
that are entirely non-profit and non-commercial in nature, intent and
actuality.

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